Artists that work in series look to create a body of work around one idea, subject, theme, concept etc.
Paul Cézanne, 1839–1906, was a French artist Cézanne painted the landscape and the people of Provence, where he came from and which he loved and felt no artist had yet given justice too. His attention was fixed on the unchanging fundamental structures of Nature - a circumscribed repertoire of landscape elements, the hills and mountains of Provence, fields, pine forests, villages, rivers, lakes and Mediterranean coast.
Cézanne's interest in landscape developed relatively late. He painted and drew in the open as early as 1862 but it seems it wasn't until around 1866 that he ceased to see landscape as a backdrop for scenes and began to approach it in its own right.
In his compositions it seems Cézanne's used paralells and horizontals to get a sense of depth. This served to highlight the middle distance and had the effect of stressing what we see there.
In his compositions it seems Cézanne's used paralells and horizontals to get a sense of depth. This served to highlight the middle distance and had the effect of stressing what we see there.
The Montagnue Sainte-Victoire stands east of Cézanne's home town, Aix-en-Provence. Cézanne often painted this mountain as it symbolised the landscapes and characteristics of his native Provence. Cézanne cropped the view so that the branches of the pine trees mimic the mountains outline - a device that makes the distant peak seem closer and larger.
Cézanne learned to observe and reproduce the diverse ways in which light was reflected. He used aerial perspective that created unity of overall impact: created an atmospheric whole from the use of colour values in the subject and the light.
Source: www/royalacademy.org.uk
Claude Monet was the master of landscape scenes. He rapidly executed them in vibrant oil paint directly onto canvas. But it has come to light in more recent years that Monet's graphic work was an integral part of his creative process. The Grand Journal, compiled by Domte Theophile Beguin Billecocq (1825-1906) who first met Monet c1853, talks about Monet going on sketching expeditions with the Beguin Billecocq family throughout the 1850s. It talks of Monet constantly drawing, armed with paper, pencils, sketchbooks and watercolour - confirmation of his commitment to graphic techniques and an early interest in subjects drawn from nature to which he was to adopt later as a painter. It speaks of Monet's choice to go to Algeria for his military service in 1861-62 so that he could study the intense southern light, exotic subject matter and heightened colour. The Beguin Billecocq family would receive from Monet small drawings of fauna and flora landscapes, countryside views, inhabitants, rivers, buildings, mosques, scenes of the market and everyday life. Monet also showed a commitment to pastels leading to him becoming one of the leading practitioners in the medium during the 1870s. The medium sitting between line and colour, presented the possibility of marrying the dominance of line and the freedom of colour, towards which Monet naturally gravitated. It also permitted him to experiment in a medium whose capacity for rapid execution allowed him to capture a sequence of different qualities of light before he had mastered the rapid application of paint on canvas that opened the way to impressionism in the 1870s.
Close examination of sketchbook sheets that survive in tandem with the painted explorations that lead to Monet's great later work of the great Nympheas decorations, finally installed in the Orangerie in Paris in 1927, demonstrate that the artist also undertook extensive exploration in black chalk on paper. It becomes apparent that, in the closing phase of his career, there is indeed a translation of the deft monotone chalk marks on paper into the gestural, paint-laden brushwork applied to canvas.
